Archive for 9 January 2018

In a post from last August I pondered “the wisdom of the Galilean Master, who counseled prayer and fasting. And to make it a Druidic triad, we’ll add listening, because listening is another face it wears. Listening, prayer and fasting. LPF.”

front door view, 5 Jan 2018

And though it’s a Triad, each component works well by itself, if I’m not up for practicing all three as a package deal.

I have Druid friends who practice a regular weekly media fast — priceless counsel in these days of overloud and unhinged media assaulting our sensibilities. It’s not a fluke, or an indulgence. It’s simple self-preservation. No matter your affiliations and allegiances, it fits — it serves your highest good: the noise has gotten louder, more obnoxious, intrusive, demanding. How, I ask, is my spiritual armor holding up?

I find one version of LPF particularly useful if I’m about to fire off that tweet or Facebook post I could easily regret in five minutes or less. Or the quick retort to a co-worker or partner that has an unwonted, and unwanted, edge to it.

“Sit, sing, and wait”, to put it in words that practitioners of my other spiritual path commonly use. (The “sitting” is focus; I can “sit” while walking my favorite three-mile loop on a nearby dirt road. Sometimes sitting is doing just one thing. I build a fire. All I do is build a fire. No need for anything else. A fire meditation-in-action.)

Yes, go ahead and get down in words what I’m feeling. In itself that can be perfect response to anger, despair, whatever is dancing along my nerves and sinews. Print it out if it’s onscreen. Burn it. (Toss it in the woodstove.) Do the same if I’ve handwritten it in a journal or notebook. Let flames alchemize it back to the elements. Let it go even as it goes.

But then, says wise counsel, chant, sing, turn on your favorite CD or meditation track, restore your perspective through practicing joy. Yes, my friends remind me, you really do need to practice joy. Firegazing. Humming an octave higher or lower as I vacuum than the tune of the motor.

And in the ensuing re-calibration, re-balancing, re-equilibration that’s going on, wait. As with sitting, I can wait by turning down the inner and outer noise as I do something focused. Carry wood into garage, the night’s supply.

Welcome a chance for silence.

Sit, sing, and wait.

We know so little of silence that waiting without the muzak of all five senses firing, even for a brief interval, can seem oddly intimidating.

“You mean do nothing?!”

No — I mean wait. Let the dust settle. Let the moment clarify. A job of work in itself. Sometimes thirty seconds can be enough. Sometimes I need the full hour of that three-mile loop of dirt road, hills and trees. Sometimes a contemplation asks for sitting in a chair, unplugged, listening, alert, attentive to what is coming. Not the noise I carry with me. The song outside, the deeper song within.

My other spiritual path sets a high premium on a weekly fast as well, whether physical or mental. Both can be difficult, but wonderfully revealing of just where I expend energy.

Because what I think my priorities are, and how I actually spend the day’s energy and attention, will always show a gap. My practice for that day, whatever else I’ve got going on, is noticing and then closing the gap. (I’m cleaning the house. No, actually, I’m sitting in front of a screen most of the morning. Or I’m letting go the past. No, actually, I’m just rehearsing it instead.)

Even a little practice is “more than before”, my go-to mantra for progress. And just the effort to practice is in itself progress. To use bowling imagery, the skill to take down a single pin is just as great — just as useful and valuable — as the skill to make a strike.

More than before.

But fasting can also be ongoing, a powerful technique against the demand for our attention, one of the most valuable attributes we possess. “Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also” — so true. I need the reminder; everyone wants my attention. Advertisers and politicians depend on grabbing it and holding it long enough to get me to buy and vote. Rabble rousers just want the satisfaction of rousing my rabble — they want my attention any way they can get it, as psychic food. Getting and spending, I lay waste my powers. Wordsworth, old bard, you knew and wrote this 212 years ago.

A blessed thaw has come, after the bitter last two weeks. The eaves are dripping, and the sheathe of ice and snow on the solar panels finally loosened its grip enough I can roof-rake it off, and the panels can begin to receive the sun fully again.